


How to Become a Prophet in Five Easy Steps

by deborah_judge



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Dubious Morality, F/M, Imprisonment, Religious Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-04
Updated: 2013-03-04
Packaged: 2017-12-04 06:43:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/707734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deborah_judge/pseuds/deborah_judge
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You can only find God if you're not afraid to die.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How to Become a Prophet in Five Easy Steps

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to leakypen for the prompt.
> 
> As usual, all religious beliefs held by any characters in my stories are theirs and not mine.  
> And wow, first Kara/Leoben in forever. I've missed them.

1\. _Die_

Leoben's first death is shortly after he's born. His second is shortly after that. He needs not to be afraid of it so he learns, he trains himself until he can cut his own throat without flinching and can drown with his face calm and eyes open. Death is not the enemy, he knows, it's the place where he's from, the place his mother came from before she made him. God is there, and you can only find God if you're not afraid to die.

He dies many times before he sees her, and then he does. He learns not to be afraid of death. 

2\. _Love_

There is nothing in the universe more important than Kara's voice. She is the centre of everything, of life and death and life and birth and death and birth. It is obvious that he belongs to her. It is obvious that if he is given the gift of prophecy it will be for her sake.

There is a thing that he has seen: Kara naked, the arc of her neck, her arms reaching, her legs clasped around him while he moves inside her, desire so sweet and so strong. He wants it more than anything, far more than he's ever wanted to stay alive. He decides that this too he would give up for her sake, and he trusts himself less than he should, and he wonders if prophecy will ever be something that he deserves.

3\. _Believe_

He locks the door because it was destined. He has seen Kara's future, and it will come from what she endures in this place. The role of the prophet is to bind the people to God, and God to the people. He offers his body to her like a sacrifice and lets her sprinkle his blood on the apartment walls.

In visions she embraces him, her touch gentle and full of love, her eyes soft and wet. God sends him visions so he must believe them. The last gift he can give Kara is this vision's complete fulfillment: One kiss, three words, a brief touch, and then her knife opening him one last time.

Leoben awakes in the birthing tank, then runs quickly to the apartment. Kara has left a shirt there and he holds it, curls himself around it and cries. He has given her in one moment all the visions that could have been, all the years of his body wrapped around hers and their home with their child. _Now_ , he thinks, _now she is free_.

4\. _See_

Leoben runs away because Kara is dead. She brought him here to see her body, and it is dead. Death has never frightened him, not his, not anyone else's, but hers does. It takes from him his ability to prophecy.

This world is dead, it is the death from which he came and the death to which he returns. Leoben has brought God here to die with those who died here, to share their death and be dead in it with them. And all Leoben wants is for Kara to be alive.

Visions meld past and future and past, what has been and what will be and what always was, but when Leoben opens his eyes all he can see is Kara's body amidst the shards of this world. It is what he sees. "I am not worthy to be a prophet," Leoben says to the dead world and empty sky. Kara will find her own way now. She is less afraid than he ever was.

5\. _Live_

On Earth-that-will-be, Leoben plows fields for grain and hunts in the forest to bring food for the camp. At night he shares his hearthfire with humans, and Cylons, and the new humans that they have met. These three peoples all were dying, all were survivors, and all would rescue each other. Leoben shares his fire with them, and his food, but does not speak. 

He was right about everything: This is the place that God needed them to come. This is the place that Kara brought them. And yet he failed her, in so, so many ways.

In the night, in the dark, one night he feels a kiss. He opens his eyes and sees nothing. The next night he feels it again. 

The God he speaks about, when he begins to speak, is cruel and hurting, is forgiving and kind. God destroyed one world and made another. God remembers our crimes, and is harmed by them. God is so, so beautiful, so worthy of being loved that our hearts break on loving, and yet in this love are completely remade.

At night he waits for Kara's next kiss. It won't be long, he knows. He learns not to be afraid of God.


End file.
